Planning the family is under way

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Mary Donaldson has revealed she wants several children, plans to work with the mentally ill and will not accept "unfaithfulness in marriage". She and Prince Frederik will be under pressure to have children to ensure the 1000-year-plus royal line continues.

In a series of exclusive interviews with the Danish newspaper Politiken, the 32-year-old lawyer from Tasmania said she still felt nervous about being the centre of attention, knowing her every action as Princess Mary would be scrutinised.

"I always hated to be photographed," she said. "Now, I will have to get over that and also learn to behave properly in public.

"There are many norms of behaviour. Just the way I have to walk with him (Frederik). People judge you from a picture, from some wrong information, and this is hard because you can't defend yourself. I cannot go out and say I'll give an interview and comment about what is written about me."

The interview with Ms Donaldson, her first since her engagement to the prince in October, took up more than five pages of Copenhagen's most influential broadsheet newspaper.

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She has given up her Australian citizenship and joined Denmark's Lutheran Evangelical Church in order to marry the prince, who she described as "warm-hearted, loyal and honest".

She said they got to know each other through letters and email before she moved to Copenhagen in 2002. She sent him a Powderfinger CD, he responded with Sword Sol (Black Sun), a Danish rock band.

"He's very easy to be around with, he's funny, he's also curious," she said. "He can be full of surprises."

She paid tribute to her own mother, Henrietta, who died in 1997 after a heart operation. "From time to time, I feel she is very close, that she is just next to me," she said.